There has been a proliferation of methods of information technology consumption as service providers move to provide disaggregated IT services in the form of web services (e.g. application programming interfaces (APIs)), platform services (e.g. Platform as a service (PaaS)), infrastructure services (e.g. Infrastructure as a service (IaaS)), software subscription services (e.g. Software as a service (SaaS)), and service management (e.g. IT service management coordination and/or integration software). Additionally, organizations other than traditional IT service providers have begun offering access to internal IT system resources through the aforementioned methods and others.
Because of the complexity created by the proliferation of disaggregated IT services, many companies and other types of organizations are unable to efficiently connect new IT services to each other as well as to legacy IT systems where, in some cases, the bulk of an organization's data resides. This limits their ability to innovate. Traditional methods of application and service integration include custom system integration via professional services and/or integration platforms. These approaches fall short because they only cover a subset of service endpoints and/or lack the scalability, modularity, and extensibility required for modern IT use cases driven by technological advances in cloud computing, social media, predictive analytics, mobile device proliferation, the Internet of Things (IoT), machine learning and other emerging technologies.